


Ebenezer was my Grandfathers Name (A Grave Christmas Story)

by AtmosphericDisruption



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Christmas fic, Explicit Language, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-14
Updated: 2018-01-14
Packaged: 2019-03-04 13:29:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13365708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AtmosphericDisruption/pseuds/AtmosphericDisruption
Summary: It's a fucking Christmas curse.In which Graves does everything except the one thing he actually wants. Sleep.





	Ebenezer was my Grandfathers Name (A Grave Christmas Story)

**Author's Note:**

> I own nothing 'cept the spelling mistakes, shitty grammar, and unstable tenses.

Percival ain’t got no time for this Yule bullshit. Instead of his nice normal murders, he gets people strangled with tinsel and poisoned with cranberry sauce. And somehow he always ends up covered in glitter. He hates the parties, the music, the general feelings of forced cheer, and familial obligations. So when his second in command, Ira Cosmano, invites him to the office party he doesn’t even bother to look up from his work and just waves the man out of his office. It’s not like they actually want him there anyway, he knows they only ask to seem polite.

He waits till the party is in full swing and everyone is distracted with the glitter and glam to slip out of his office and into the chilly night. He’s sure to ward his door against any intrusions for the next 36 hours, hopefully this will dissuade any gift givers and misguided decorators. Every year two or three slip past his defences and every year they are returned to their sender unopened and the decorations quietly banished. It would be unethical of him to accept anything from his employees lest he be accused of accepting bribes. 

Five minutes later, he’s glad to be home, away from all the festiveness and powdery death from above. He makes himself a simple dinner of steak, potatoes, and greens, but before he can start eating a neighbour knocks on his door and asks if he can help recast the heating charms in their house across the street. He does so with much grumbling and a promise to call him before the damn thing fails rather than after.

Five minutes after he’s done with that and is about to take a bite out of his perfectly rare steak there’s another knock. This time it's a druid with a collection tin. He doesn’t invite the woman in, but he does give her a handful of galleons to make her leave before returning to his meal.

He’s just finished washing up when there’s a third knock. Percy very determinedly ignores it. After three minutes of ceaseless knocking he storms to the front hall and throws open the door. He stares blankly at the gaggle of aurors standing on his stoop holding brightly wrapped gifts and one very familiar pastry box before slamming the door closed without a word. He hopes they freeze. 

A note and the shrunken presents are shoved through his letter slot. A cheerful masculine voice calls after them, wishing him a Merry Yule. Ira is going to be helping out the wand permit office for the foreseeable future.

Graves leaves the gifts on the doormat, even the pastries, as tempting as they are, and heads upstairs to bed.

The rustle of paper wakes him out of his light sleep and he jerks awake, shooting out a cutting hex in the direction of the noise. There’s a familiar yelp and Percy snaps his fingers, causing the lights to flicker on. A frazzled Abernathy appears, weighed down with stacks of paperwork yammering on about saving him from his lonely existence and visitations. That druid must have done something to him. Percy glances at the clock and sighs. Graves ignores Abernathy as usual and instead pulls the covers over his head. He’ll figure it out in the morning. He may have given the department the day off but he’s still got work to do. There’s no time for delusions.

Enter Credence, Ghost of Yule Past, or so he says. The boy tugs at the covers and stares pitifully at him until Percy relents and crawls out of his warm bed, clutching a blanket around his shoulders. Graves watches his past Yule celebrations play out with disinterest. He did a lot of hiding in corners and nibbling on gingerbread cookies. Ah. And there’s his great Aunt Margaret pinching his cheeks with her claw like fingers. She died over fifteen years ago after getting drunk and wandering into the sea. A strange end for a strange woman. And there’s the ones he spent alone at school. How droll. He gets bored rather quickly Percy look away from the goings on and instead focuses on the pale figure next to him. The boy looks terribly frail in his ill fitting clothes and the unflattering haircut does nothing for him. His first office Yule party is going on around them when Percy drapes his blanket over Credence’s fidgeting form. If this wasn’t a damn dream he would totally be feeding the kid everything in sight before sending him to bed with a mug of hot cocoa. He spends the rest of the little trip down memory lane fussing over the boy and extracting a confused promise to dress warmer and get enough sleep. Even if he is already dead. Or a delusion. Whatever. Delusions could have feelings too.   
After that he blinks and he’s back in bed and there’s no sign of his companion.

 

Huh. And his blanket is missing. He summons a heavy quilt from the hall closet and proceeds to swaddle himself in it’s familiar material.  
He’s almost fully asleep when Tina’s curt tone calls his name. He groans and tosses a pillow in her general direction. He wants to sleep damn it! She pokes him until he gives her a look so venomous that the apparition wearing Goldstein face throws her hands up in surrender. He gets out of bed once again and orders her to get this over with. He’s got shit to do in the morning. 

She takes his hand and drags him out of his room and into MACUSA’s ballroom. It’s the party he worked hard to avoid. When he catches sight of the table practically groaning under the weight of all the liquor he regrets not going. The apparition does not appreciate this lament. She drags him around the room and he catches snippets of conversations, people asking where he was, theories on how he thinks he’s too good to mingle with the peasants, and hushed whispers of his aurors worrying over his health. Merlin, these people are obsessed with him. It’s both flattering and depressing. Don’t they have better things to think about? Like work? He guesses it takes being kidnapped by the darkest wizard of their age for them to even notice his absence. They never seemed to before. Tina huffs in frustration and curses his thick head. Percy asks if he can go back to sleep now. Instead of an answer Tina give him a hard shove and he tips backwards, his arms pinwheeling uselessly. He braces for contact with the wooden floor but is instead greeted with the softness of his pillows. Rude. 

Percy doesn’t bother trying to go to sleep this time. Things like this usually come in threes, and since he’s seen the past and the present, the future is nigh. 

Mercy fucking Lewis. His future is hot. Especially with the coat and the bow tie, and the fidgeting and refusal to meet his eyes. Why couldn’t it have been Goldstein the Younger? Or that no-maj baker? Or even Seraphina? Why oh why did it have to be Newt? The man just holds out his hand and Graves takes it, resigned to this whole surreal experience. 

Two seconds later he opens his eyes to a graveyard. It’s nice, as far as graveyards go, with the right amount of spooky trees and crumbling headstones intermixed with bright flowers. It’s the middle of Autumn judging by the leaves and the clothing worn by crowd of people standing by a freshly dug grave. He sincerely hopes it isn't his funeral. He specifically requested to be burned on a pyre under the full moon while his well wishers send him to the afterlife amidst drunken revelry and debauchery. Not this depressing and drab spectacle before him. There’s weeping, wailing, manly sniffles, and nary a bottle of booze in sight. At least they’ll miss him, the idiots. 

Scamander seems to find his complaints to be amusing even as he tries to point out that complaining about his funeral is not why they are here. Percival states that he already knows that his co-workers are obsessed with him and the he really needs to teach them how to read or that he needs to leave his will somewhere they can find. Like spellotapped to his office door. Because they are clearly blind neanderthals who can’t follow instructions. It’s in his damn desk. Top drawer. Left hand side. Next to the peppermints they think he doesn’t realize they steal.

The Not-Newt laughs so hard he’s in tears. Percy secretly vows to make the real Newt laugh like that the next time they cross paths. As soon as that thought crosses his mind the Not-Newt meets his gaze, those green eyes seemingly looking into his soul. Whatever he sees seems to satisfy him and the stupidly charming man leans forward. Percival closes his eyes, moving forward to meet those soft looking lips only to feel the dampness of his drool spotted pillow. 

He jerks up, and wipes the drool off of his cheek, half formed plans of wooing and pettiness swimming around his mind. He’ll make sure that his idiots fear respect him enough to torch him as requested. And that they don’t worry as much. Maybe he should make an effort to socialize for five minutes a day. Yes. He could manage that. And perhaps he should write a response to those letters from far off places he receives every so often rather than reading them every morning. With his plans laid out, Percy burrowed back under the covers and went back to sleep. 

His alarm goes off ten minutes later.


End file.
